As someone who was there at the time (our work at Fort Hood with antiwar GIs was why the CPD had no backup at the convention, with the riot the result) and held the same views then as Kazin, I fully agree as an historian and political observer of the past 50+ years that we did exactly what he says we did when we failed to vote for Humphrey. It got us four more years of the war and the majority of the casualties, so Nixon and Kissinger could finally accept the same deal in December 1972 that LBJ had obtained in November 1968. This failure on our part also led directly to Nixon's war on democracy at home and Watergate. If you read Rick Perlstein's histories of the rise of the Right (which everyone should if you want to understand the natue of The Enemy), you will see it also led directly to Reagan and the overthrow of the New Deal 44 years ago, which has resulted in us being where we are today.
What I now call The Idiot Left - the fools who said there was no difference between Gore and Bush in 2000 and "voted their consciences" for Nader, thereby giving us the past 24 years of failed war, and the Berner idiots who wrote in his name "because of my conscience" - despite his please for them not to do that - and thereby gave Trump his Electoral College victory with the results in Wisconsin and Michigan.
"Voting my conscience" means you place your ego first, over the good of the community. Doing that has been guaranteed to get Exactly What Wasn't Wanted every time.
In 1932 the German Communists campaigned against the Social Democrats as "social fascists" and claimed a Nazi victory would "speed the revolution." We all know how that ignoramus move turned out. The far left has never had its head out of its ass.
Excellent piece. We need a book length treatment of cold war American liberalism and its legacy.
Thanks! And agreed.
As someone who was there at the time (our work at Fort Hood with antiwar GIs was why the CPD had no backup at the convention, with the riot the result) and held the same views then as Kazin, I fully agree as an historian and political observer of the past 50+ years that we did exactly what he says we did when we failed to vote for Humphrey. It got us four more years of the war and the majority of the casualties, so Nixon and Kissinger could finally accept the same deal in December 1972 that LBJ had obtained in November 1968. This failure on our part also led directly to Nixon's war on democracy at home and Watergate. If you read Rick Perlstein's histories of the rise of the Right (which everyone should if you want to understand the natue of The Enemy), you will see it also led directly to Reagan and the overthrow of the New Deal 44 years ago, which has resulted in us being where we are today.
What I now call The Idiot Left - the fools who said there was no difference between Gore and Bush in 2000 and "voted their consciences" for Nader, thereby giving us the past 24 years of failed war, and the Berner idiots who wrote in his name "because of my conscience" - despite his please for them not to do that - and thereby gave Trump his Electoral College victory with the results in Wisconsin and Michigan.
"Voting my conscience" means you place your ego first, over the good of the community. Doing that has been guaranteed to get Exactly What Wasn't Wanted every time.
In 1932 the German Communists campaigned against the Social Democrats as "social fascists" and claimed a Nazi victory would "speed the revolution." We all know how that ignoramus move turned out. The far left has never had its head out of its ass.